Cellular automata in $d$ dimensions and ground states of spin models in $(d+1)$ dimensions

We show how the trajectories of $d$-dimensional cellular automata (CA) can be used to determine the ground states of $(d+1)$-dimensional classical spin models, and we characterise their quantum phase transition, when in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. For each of the 256 one-dimensional elementary CA we explicitly construct the simplest local two-dimensional classical spin model associated to the given CA, and we also describe this method for $d>1$ through selected examples. We illustrate our general observations with detailed studies of: (i) the $d=1$ CA Rule 150 and its $d=2$ four-body plaquette spin model, (ii) the $d=2$ CA whose associated model is the $d=3$ square-pyramid plaquette model, and (iii) two counter-propagating $d=1$ Rule 60 CA that correspond to the two-dimensional Baxter-Wu spin model. For the quantum spin models, we show that the connection to CAs implies a sensitivity on the approach to the thermodynamic limit via finite size scaling for their quantum phase transitions.